The present invention relates to a method for testing PCMCIA cards and, in particular, to a method for automation of testing PCMICA cards.
Personal computer memory card international association (PCMCIA) is a memory card standard set by the United States of America and Japan, which sets the connection standard for the peripheral devices of a portable computer. PCMCIA also has the design of conversion to other interfaces, such as PCMCIA to SCSI, PCMCIA to IDE, etc, so as to allow the portable computer to use various interfaces of personal computers. Currently, there are three different interfaces on portable computers, namely, PCMCIA I, PCMCIA II, and PCMCIA III. The thickness of a PCMCIA III card is twice that of a PCMCIA II card, and the PCMCIA card is the thinnest. The main function of a PCMCIA card is to expand the capability of a portable computer so that the memory, network card, modem, SCSI devices (such as high capacity hard drives, scanners) can be connected thereon. A usual PCMCIA cards has capacity up to 64 MB, a size of a credit card, 16 bit slot and 68 pins; yet the thickness varies from computers to computers. Most portable computers support the plug-and-play function, some even support the hot-plug function (direct use without rebooting).
Recently, portable computer manufacturers are developing a new generation of PC card standard, which utilizes a 32 bit CardBus and 20/33 MHz pulse to support 132 MBps transmission rate. Basically, it is using the technology of PCI buses to provide PCMCIA interfaces for a portable computer that also have 68 pins.
The connection standard of peripherals set in PCMCIA has three levels of communications, namely, the driver level, the interface card service level, and the socket service level. The programs that support PCMCIA standard have to define and call the functions of each level according to this standard. The calling method of a conventional PCMCIA program is vertical. The application program used by the user first calls the driver level, which then calls the interface service level and the socket service in order so as to communicate with the hardware level with a personal computer interface control (PCIC). The driver level serves the drivers of all peripheral, such as the modem, network card, and CD-ROM. The socket service level functions as the BIOS in a personal computer (PC) and is in charge of the communication with low level devices, such as the settings of I/O ports and IRQs. The interface card service level plays the role of the operating system of a PC and provides services unrelated to hardware, calls the socket service level, but is not in direct communication with the hardware interface.
In each level of calling, the interface card service level and the socket level can use the software developed or designed by the programmers, nevertheless, the functions of the driver level for calling have to be designed according to the specifics of the interface card level and the socket level. This is a great difficulty for the drivers that do not support the PCMCIA card. Since to rewrite the drivers to support the PCMCIA card, the programmer has to learn the PCMCIA standard and gets familiar with how to use the functions called by PCMCIA. This task requires extra work and time.
Therefore, a complete standardized test report of the specifics, the types, and the accompanying peripherals for the users is very important. Gauging a set of procedure for testing PCMCIA cards and generating a standardized report are relatively important too.
As to the method for testing PCMCIA cards, conventional methods perform manual tests that do not only waste time and human resources but also do not have a gauged test method. Thus the efficiency and test accuracy could not be increased, and a corresponding test report could not be generated according to the user""s requirement either.
The present invention provides a method for automatic testing PCMCIA cards, which can not only resolve the problems of wasting time and human resources in the traditional manual testing method but also gauges a testing method for high efficiency and test accuracy and generates a corresponding test report pursuant to the user""s need.
The main operation flow module of a method for automatic testing PCMCIA cards according to the instant invention comprises a control panel library (CPL), a display data interception module, a registration database retrieval module, a comparison module, and a final report generator module.
First loaded is the control panel library. The application interface of the control panel library checks and displays the PCMICA module. A SetwindowsHook then loads in dynamic link library (DLL) and checks the TextOut function address from the ModuleList in PCMCIA module for interception and data storage. The peripheral description values are stored in a list and compared with the data intercepted and stored in the ModuleList to complete a test report on correctness or error.
Further scope of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.